Sexual Relationships: Basic Chemistry

I think preganacy could have just as much to do with the power of prayer as anything else. First it's "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God." Now you've got God's attention. So God figures you'll ask for what you want. "Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby." Nine months later God answers your prayers.

The species wouldn't make little ones if it weren't programmed for sex, and those little ones might not survive if we weren't programmed for relationship. It might be worthwhile to look into the neurochemical chemical basis for relationship.

Helen Fisher, a researcher at Rutgers University, and the author of a new book on love, Why We Love and suggests it comes in three flavours: lust, romantic love and long-term attachment. There is some overlap but, in essence, these are separate phenomena, with their own emotional and motivational systems, and accompanying chemicals. These systems have evolved to enable, respectively, mating, pair-bonding and parenting.

Lust
On the lust level, we find several primary players, notably testosterone, serotonin, oxytocin, vasopressin and endogenous opioids. These substances drive us towards others for the purpose of sexual union and create the basis for bonding or at least mutual addiction. The nasty part of this equation is that the release of these chemicals is independent of the Romantic Love and Long-Term Attachment phenomena and the chemical cocktail acts differently in different people's brains. Hence scenarios such as those depicted in Fatal Attraction.

Romantic Love
Dr. Fisher suggests that patterns of behavior seen in romatic love bear a resemblance to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and may be inhibited through increased levels of serotonin. It is no wonder that Plato referred to this condition as a "grave mental disease."

Long-Term Attachment
Although supported by bonding chemicals such as oxytocin, this phase appears to be a product of many factors from early childhood imprinting to complementary lifestyle choices and seems less reliant on hormonal chemistry.

So now we get to the heart of the question: How do we get love to last? We will discuss various approaches and models in the next installment.

What Gives With This Relationship Stuff Anyway?

When someone says the word "relationship," we think we know what they mean, but it is my experience that people's definitions are far from a consensus, especially when it comes to sexual relationships. Rather than focusing on the broadest of definitions, which would apply if we were describing the relationships of objects or concepts, for brevity's sake I would like to narrow it down. Let's take it even narrower than human relationships in general all the way down to sexual relationships.

On one end of the continuum we have people who insist that the only proper sexual relationship is one based solely on procreation within marriage. On the other end of the continuum we have people who flit from partner to partner without any of the constraints of commitment. Then we have everyone else, who falls somewhere between the two.

Many people have come to adopt an allowing (although subtly judgmental) framework in which to consider relationships that goes something like this:

• Asexual childhood
• Experimental adolescence
• Loss of virginity (Some insist this must occur within marriage)
  
• Sowing one's wild oats
• Settling down
• Asexual old age

Sounds reasonable. But what if the model reflects nothing but an artificial construct to deal with something far more chaotic? Almost every level of this framework is challenged by the truth of human behavior.

• Asexual childhood (When we look from a psychological point of view, we see that children are indeed sexual beings, but the sexuality is generalized and not oriented towards intercourse. Of course this is not license for the predatory behavior of certain adults; as incest or otherwise.)
  
• Experimental adolescence (This seems to be consistent with behavior. It would make sense to fully inform adolescents about essential matters such as pregnancy, parenthood, venereal disease and sexual predators. From a tantric perspective, it would also make sense to bring adolescents to an understanding of the energies emerging in their bodies and to come to understand them as a spiritual gift to be prized and used well.)
  
• Loss of virginity (The old image of a furtive moment with a teenage partner or night spent with a prostitute seems not to apply these days. In spite of the best efforts of adults, teenagers and young adults watch internet porn and imitate it, in its varied flavors.)
  
• Sowing one's wild oats (Although regarded as a transient phase, this is turning out to be a lifestyle for many.)
  
• Settling down (Many still settle down into marriage only to find themselves divorced shortly thereafter.)
  
• Asexual old age (It turns out granny gets it on, too; and often kinkier than in her youth. Statistics show that STDs are rising in the over-50 crowd.)

Given the fact that the familiar old model doesn't seem to apply any longer, one wonders about what the alternatives are. Just possibly, we were sold a bill of goods. Many cultures in the past had different ways of looking at relationships and different social constructs for managing them. In the next installment we will examine a few.